Conventionally known is a substrate treatment facility configured to perform process treatments, such as formation of an element, with respect to a semiconductor substrate (hereinafter may be simply referred to as a “substrate”) that is a semiconductor element manufacturing material. Typically, the substrate treatment facility is provided with a process treatment device, a substrate transfer device provided adjacent to the process treatment device, and the like.
For example, a substrate transfer device described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-28134 (PTL 1) includes: a casing in which a conveying chamber is formed; a plurality of load ports provided at a front wall of the casing; and a substrate conveying robot provided in the conveying chamber. The substrate conveying robot includes a robot arm and a robot hand coupled to a wrist of the robot arm. For example, the substrate conveying robot loads the substrate into the process treatment device, unloads the substrate from the process treatment device, takes out the substrate stored in a sealable substrate carrier for interprocess conveyance, and stores the substrate in the substrate carrier. Examples of the substrate transfer device include a front end module (Equipment Front End Module; abbreviated as EFEM) and a sorter. One example of the substrate carrier is a FOUP (Front Opening Unified Pod).
To improve throughput of the substrate transfer device, a plurality of substrate carriers are coupled to one conveying chamber. Therefore, the number of load ports provided at the front wall of the casing corresponds to the number of substrate carriers communicating with the conveying chamber. As a result, a width of the substrate transfer device (i.e., a width of the casing) tends to be wide. On the other hand, to reduce the size of the substrate transfer device, a reduction in depth of the substrate transfer device is desired.
An entire link length of each of links constituting the robot arm of the substrate conveying robot is limited by the depth of the substrate transfer device. Proposed is a technology of expanding a movable range of the robot hand based on the limited entire link length of each of the links of the robot arm. For example, in each of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-6267 (PTL 2) and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-169007 (PTL 3), proposed is a substrate conveying robot configured such that a robot hand or a tip end portion of the robot hand can linearly move forward and backward relative to a wrist portion of a robot arm while maintaining a constant posture.